Nick
. . legal commercial radio came to Holland in the 1960s. Programmes on the NOS carried commercials on all their channels, radio and TV, and the airtime was sold by the STER. This was many years before 1973, when the UK licensed commercial radio.

In the late 1980s, Cable One and Radio 10 showed the way for private companies to broadcast commercial radio channels in Holland, using cable and satellite (by basing the stations in countries such as the UK and Italy).

After a few years experimenting with ad-hoc permits, privately-owned stations became licensed from 1994.

But surely, offshore broadcasting to Holland was legal until the 1974 Act outlawing radio ships?

It's often believed that commercial radio didnt begin in NL until 1994, but this is quite wrong. Even sillier is the statement on Wikipedia that says it began in 2002; that was simply a frequency re-organisation.